In consulting, it's usually not your employer that pushes you. It's your clients. In a startup, it's either your investors or your customer (hopefully). Either way, there's always forces that want you to execute instead of learn. There's no direct visible gain from you learning. It's like climate change. It's important, but noone in power cares.

I totally agree with your long term statement. And I do also agree with you on the fact that just learning without execution renders your learning useless.

The thing is, how do you juggle between these two extremes? @imp notes below:

"I let my own ambitions determine which zone I'm in, and they last from a couple weeks to months."

The cycle seems to come naturally to him. For others like @Ixiaus it takes more conscious effort (I assume, since he quit his job to be able to learn the things which matter to him).